


Sleeping Beauty and the Whimsy of a Woman

by tielan



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Gen, Hurt/Comfort (sort of), Injury, Tucking Into Bed
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-11
Updated: 2017-01-11
Packaged: 2018-09-16 20:09:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,092
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9287846
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tielan/pseuds/tielan
Summary: As Steve stares at his boots, set neatly beside the bed, it dawns on him that he’s been stripped down to his boxers and that didn’t happen on its own.





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Lady_Katana4544](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lady_Katana4544/gifts).



Steve has never been so grateful to see a bed before. Or for that ‘thin-skin’ stuff that Helen Cho developed which is doing a pretty amazing job of keeping his insides in.

Maria, at least, isn’t one to lose her head at the sight of a little blood – or a lot. And the guys manning the front desk of the Ho Chi Minh 'no-tell' hotel didn’t blink twice at the sight of a woman half-carrying a man half-covered in blood, just handed her a key.

It takes Steve until they’re halfway up the stairs (which are endless) for it to sink in. This isn’t just a seedy hotel that charges by the hour, but a safehouse of some kind. And that means he can take a minute and lie down. His body will heal anyway, albeit very slowly, but it’s best to rest it for proper healing – that or get medical assistance.

Since medical assistance is probably not forthcoming for an ‘enhanced person under suspicion of terrorism’ as is his current designation care of the UN Enhanced Persons Specialty Unit, Steve is just going to have to do with rest.

At the hotel room, he sags against Maria for a moment, breathing carefully as his head bobs with tiredness against the side of hers.

He _really_ needs a rest.  But when he staggers for the bed as soon as they’re in the room, Maria swiftly redirects them towards the bathroom. “First aid first.”

Steve really wants to lie down – he hasn’t felt this short of breath since before the serum. But he goes where she directs, and manages to prop himself up against the vanity while she fumbles for something in her handbag and ends up dumping the contents in the sink to sort through it all.

It’s mostly weapons and ammunition; two guns and ammunition cartridges, a passport and a wad of cash, some tech – phone, tablet, charging block and assorted cords– the slim red zippered case from which she pulled the ‘thin-skin’ that’s presently keeping Steve from bleeding all over the bathroom floor, and a small cloth bag from which she pulls a penknife.

“I’m going to need to cut a piece from the edge of the wound,” she says. “We’ll need to take the thin-skin off anyway, because otherwise the replacement bandage will seal the thin-skin into your flesh and we don’t want that.”

Steve is down to understanding maybe one word in three. But he gets that he’s going to have to strip some, so he takes a hand off the vanity to start undoing his shirt—

The world slides up, very abruptly, and he manages to just get an elbow in so he doesn’t whack his head on the side of the toilet. The next moment, Maria is there, her hands warm and dry as she urges him down flat on the bathroom floor and starts undoing his shirt.

He knows it’s so she can reach the wound, but a part of him has cut loose and it’s that part of him that gets control of his tongue. “If you wanted me so badly...”

Steve manages to get control of his tongue before he goes any further. Just as well.

Her hands stop and she sits back on her haunches. Her cheeks are pink and her eyes are angry as she looks at him for a long moment, as though she’s contemplating getting up off her knees beside him and walking back out into the street, getting on the motorcycle that got them here and not looking back.

“Uh,” he says, abashed. “I’m—That was wrong. I was rude. I’m sorry.”

Two heartbeats pass. Three. Four.

Pressing her lips together and not saying a word, Maria continues to undo the buttons on his shirt, baring his stomach and the plastic-film-like bandage holding the gashed edges together. She retrieves the red medical case, and flips open the lid, pulling out a metal ointment tube. Moving briskly, she squeezes out the ointment on her fingers and smears it around all the edges of the bandage.

Steve tries not to wriggle at her touch – cool fingertips when his body is feeling hot and itchy around the pulsing pain of the wound that’s all the more present now that he’s on a cold tile floor. Instead, he focuses on breathing, on the signals his body is sending, on being in the moment. On Maria, who’s capping the tube and gently peeling away the curling edges of the bandage, her gaze sharp as a scalpel, and just as precise. Wound tight, and carefully controlled, a mystery and an enigma of a woman, for all that they’re friends.

In all honesty, he’s never quite managed to work her out.

“It’s a solvent,” she says as she wipes her hands on a face washer. “It’ll spread through the bandage and neutralise the adhesive so we can get it off you... But it’s going to hurt when the air hits...”

_Hurt_ seems like a mild term for when she lifts the bandage off. Burning fire and biting ice, the throbbing agony of it makes him press his head back against the tiled floor.

“Breathe,” Maria says crisply. “And don’t move.”

Later, Steve will piece together the tidbits of his memories to form an idea of what Maria did, but in the moment all his energy goes towards remembering the breathe. The bandage dulled the pain –  _probably some kind of numbing contact –_ and now that it’s off...

A disinfectant wipe package makes a tearing sound as it’s opened; the discarded packet falls to the ground with a soft slap. The penknife creaks slightly as it opens, and the wipe itself thuds damply to the floor as Maria discards it.

“Taking a flesh sample.”

Steve manages to ask, “For what?” Taking the sample barely registers – a mere atoll of pain in an ocean of agony.

He can’t see what she’s doing – she’s leaning away to his off side but he can hear something being opened then shut and when she lifts it, he sees it’s a tiny canister of liquid with wires coming out the sides. She shakes it once, then sets it down and swiftly pulls out another bandage – similar to the last, only a little thicker, with two wires sticking out the sides.

“This is a bandage along the lines of the Cradle – sized for critical wounds on the battlefield.”

“Wasn’t a battlefield.”

“You were there. You were fighting. In conclusion: battlefield. Now hold still.” She shakes a little can of something and the next moment—

Cool spray. A slight tingling effect. Then a reduction in the pain. Steve has time to blow out a long, relieved breath before her hands are positioning the bandage over the gash and pressing it down around the edges. The noise he makes on an indrawn breath nearly chokes him – even that little bit of pressure causes untold pain.

“Sorry.” A note of regret stains her voice, but she keeps the pressure on, sealing the edges of the bandage, around the wound. “Nearly done.” 

The tiny canister she wires to the bandage has something floating in it. Steve can’t focus what. And then Maria tapes it to the top of the bandage and the pain isn’t getting any better, but at least it’s not getting worse.

“I have to go out for an hour,” she says as she packs up the first aid kit. “I can leave you lying here for a bit so long as you actually stay down. You won’t come to damage on the floor, and it’ll give the bandage time to start its work.”

“What’s it do?”

Maria tosses the case back up into the vanity basin. “It’s an intelligent bandage – a miniature cradle, really. From what Helen explained, it starts making and bonding human tissue over the wound. The tissue it’s creating has been structured to your DNA, so it’s still your flesh, rather than plastic or neutral cells.” She looks at him. “Without it, we’d have had to call in at Seoul, and that creates a whole new level of complicated bureacracy.”

Steve has other questions he wants to ask, but exhaustion crashes over him like a wave in the surf, and his eyelids want nothing to much as to close and let the world pass him by...

He drags them open, and frowns that the light is off and the room is silent, but before he can drag himself up, he feels sleep pulling him under...again...

When he wakes, it’s fully dark outside, and the sounds of the city’s nightlife are going full throttle. Someone – several someones – are singing karaoke, and the air is full of the steady honk of horns and the gutteral chug of motorcycle engines. 

He sits up and then winces. His abdomen hurts, but it’s nothing to the all-encompassing pain of before. When he touches the bandage, gingerly, the pain increases, but it’s still mangeable.

The light coming in through the vertical blinds is enough for him to see the room—and there’s no sign of Maria.

Fear grips him, and he swings his feet out of the bed, not giving his injury a second thought, did something happen to her while he was out—?

His feet come down on a pair of boots – his boots, neatly lined up and tucked right up against the bed. And as Steve stares at them, it dawns on him that he’s been stripped down to his boxers and that didn’t happen on its own. Well, him getting into bed didn’t happen on its own either...

He has a vague memory of being woken, of being carefully levered upright, of stumbling at the edge of the bed and fetching up against Maria’s body. He recalls hissing with pain as her arms came around him, propping him up, and that her hair was silky against his cheek. There might have been a drowsy conversation involving her asking him to lift body parts, like arms and legs, her touch no-nonsense as she helped him out of his clothes and...tucked him in.

Possibly with a trace of fingers over his hair. Steve thinks he might remember the faintest of caresses, although it’s equally possible he just dreamed it, right on the edge of healing sleep.

Steve looks about the room, and his eye alights on a bottle of blue electrolyte drink sitting on the nightstand, along with his wallet and false ID passport. There’s a large post-it note stuck to the lid with,  _DRINK ME FIRST_ , in Maria’s familiar scrawl. At the sight of it, his stomach suddenly makes itself known, and he picks it up, breaks the seal, and drinks.

It tastes utterly disgusting.

He chokes it down nevertheless, and while taking a breather between gulps, notices the note it had been pinning to the nightstand.

_Hey Sleeping Beauty,_

_Got called out to handle a situation. Stay in the hotel for another 48 hours, let the bandage do its work. Don’t take it off until at least morning, preferably not until tomorrow night. Fridge is full of food, microwave works. Lay low, and use the ID and mesh to get out of the country. _

_You’re meeting Sam in Hong Kong on the 26 th. Try not to need further rescuing for at least a month. _

_Maria._

Steve reads it twice as he finishes off the drink, then goes to check on the bar fridge in the corner. It’s pretty much stuffed with containers of food – all of them high-carb and high-protein foods that he enjoys, plus a box or two of sugary rice cakes – the kind he likes and which give him a quick, tasty burst of energy.

He has one while he contemplates the room and his options. She didn’t leave him much by way of information, but then when has she ever? Eternally helpful yet persistently sphinx-like – that’s Maria to a tee.

Sitting back down on the bed, he re-reads the note again. Maybe it’s stupid, but he keeps on thinking that maybe something else will come clear, although he surely doesn’t know what.

_Hey Sleeping Beauty..._

Steve’s mouth quirks. The peculiar whimsy is unexpected and yet very much Maria, from the opening down to the tone of the last line. He folds the note back up in its creases and puts it in his wallet, among the billfolds. He’ll lay low at her instruction, eat the food she’s left him, and heal up.

And since she’s called it, maybe he’ll ask for a kiss the next time they meet.

 


End file.
